I read a whole bunch of stuff, some of it interesting, some of it funny. Some of it I want to share with other people. Some A whole bunch of it is pictures of cats with misspelled words superimposed.
In any case, should you wish to see the stuff I like, you can do so here. Or grab the RSS feed, if you are that way inclined.
Enjoy.
RodeoClown: heteronymous.
Basic instructions on how to keep your job in perspective.
Whenever your job sucks, just think, it could always be worse.
RodeoClown: not complaining
When you read most (English) Bibles, you will find an odd convention: the word ‘Lord’ in smallcaps.
This is the word most often used when translating the tetragrammaton, — that is, the name God used to introduce himself to Moses: YHWH (or Yahweh, when you add the vowels that aren’t written in Hebrew) — into English.
It looks like using ‘Lord’ originated out of a false sense of not wanting to take Yahweh’s name in vain, which is a fair enough ideal, but comes at the expense of using the name Yahweh himself gave to identify him over other gods.
I occasionally call my wife ‘wife’, or ‘hey you’, or ‘that gorgeous woman that I married’, but those aren’t her names – they describe her, and she knows I mean her when I use them, but her name is Jen(nifer), and that is the name I should use when talking about her, an individual with an identity, not just a nameless human, or a generic wife.
If people refused to ever use my name when they spoke of me, I’d feel a bit let down. I don’t presume to suggest that’s what Yahweh God feels, but he told us his name, so I think we should use it.
Your homework for today (and every day): when you come across the words ‘the Lord‘, replace it in your mind with ‘Yahweh’. This does two things:
1) It makes you remember who we are talking about, not just some nameless god, but the God who created the universe.
2) It makes the Bible a whole bunch clearer. It is God’s name, and when it is replaced with a wimpy ‘Lord‘, it hides things that would otherwise be clear.
The minister at our old church used to do this and it drove me mad at the time, but now I’m convinced that it is the right way to go.
Further reading:
“This is what the
LordYahweh says, he who made the earth, theLordYahweh who formed it and established it—theLordYahweh is his name”- Jeremiah 33:2
RodeoClown: hey you!